06-02-2015: Kingston University’s: The Birds and Bashing Rhodo - now showing on a campus near you!

Odd camera goings on, on the 31st!

The last two weekends in January were filled to bursting as students, staff and local volunteers took part in the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch on (neeearly) all of the Kingston University campuses and halls as well as undertaking the last of the volunteer led Rhodo bashes this winter at Kingston Hill.

Staff and students took part in the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch on lots of our sites, it was another opportunity for groups taking part in Green Impact to get involved. We had two groups – The Sustainable Swans surveyed the area around Knights Park and Middle Mill, and a new team from Planning surveyed the area around the rear of River House. Other sites and halls of residence were surveyed by students and other staff.


The table below shows the preliminary results for our sites with the complex around the river coming up top (at the moment) for the most number of species.

Sustainable Swans Surveying at Knights Park

Birds birds birds

The Rhodo bash on the 31st went really well. Students, staff and local residents were joined in the morning by a group of boys from Tower House School lead by Chris Cockel from The Environment Trust. 

Getting stuck into the Rhodo in the morning

The team worked really had clearing a large section of invasive plants behind Coombehurst House and freeing up several large trees from the barricade of Rhodo!

A well-deserved mid morning break...

...before getting stuck in again!

Some breaking news from KU: we’ve finished our current update of our Biodiversity Action Plan covering the period from 2015-2019, we’ll soon be publishing this on our external pages for everyone to see. 

Upcoming Training:

An exciting opportunity to be involved in the formation of the Hogsmill Pollution Patrol project run by the South East Rivers Trust (SERT). SERT are running a free training event at Knights Park Campus on Wednesday 18Feb from 1-4pm. 

The patrols involve monitoring known outfalls on the river (from the bank) and reporting any incidents. The project is ideally placed for KU students and staff as well as local residents as the quick weekly/fortnightly checks should take only around 5-20 minutes. 

Places are limited so if you are interested please email me your name and contact details to reserve your space. If places become booked out we will forward your details on to SERT so that they can update you on any other training courses in Kingston in the future.

Til next time!